Video and audio techniques

Explanations and tutorials on technical concepts related to video and audio. How to avoid blurry movies, remove the background, reduce shaky footage, improve sound, and how to reduce background noise, etc..

Let’s confess; I behaved like a total fool when interviewing a sound designer in London. The interview went well when, after 10 minutes, I discovered that the connector of the external microphone was not plugged into the camcorder.
Because I had set the audio on the camcorder to external, I had no audio at all.

I was looking for information on Rode mics when I bumped into a video of Ken Sparkes, the famous broadcasting personality of Australia. In the video, he demonstrates the Procaster microphone for broadcasting and then he gives a couple of very interesting tips how to use a professional microphone. Update 1 Dec 2016: Unfortunately, the … Read moreTips to use a microphone

You have that wonderful and rather expensive external mic with XLR connection and discovered it doesn’t work on your computer? Yet, you bought an adapter for the XLR connection to fit into the sound board of your computer and it still doesn’t work? Chances are that your mic needs a lot of phantom power. Professional … Read moreHow to connect an external microphone to my computer

There are 2 convenient ways to brand your videos with a logo watermark. Method 1 is adding a watermark during publishing. Method 2 embeds a watermark in post production before rendering the final video. Both have advantages and disadvantages which are explained here:

Wide screen on YouTube is going to change your workflow and it will encourage you to be even more creative. From now on, the player of YouTube is set to 640 x 360 pixels, which is actually equal to the dimensions of a High Definition Video (HDV)

The PowerMate from Griffin Technology is a very useful multimedia device that can be used to scrub video to and fro(fast forward-backward). It’s a cheap solution that doesn’t really compare with professional video editing hardware, but it comes close to being a very affordable surrogate shuttle wheel. It is actually what I have been looking … Read moreThe PowerMate from Griffin Technology – review

Let’s say you have a 320pixels x 240pixels movie and you want to upload it to a video channel? Then you need to adapt your video so that it will not stretch and look blurry. There is a rather simple trick for that: importing your video into a new one which is 480×360 pixels. That … Read moreHow to make your video bigger without resizing

Environmental sounds are often confused with static because, just as static, it produces a disturbing drone in the background. Tthe funny thing is, that we hear those sounds in reality all the time, but we filter them from our minds automatically. If we wouldn’t block out all that irrelevant background noise, we would go totally … Read moreHow to reduce environmental sound in audios?

Some sound editors, like Audacity from SoundForge can reduce static noise, but the disadvantage is that it deforms the audio. Therefore, it is best to quelch static before it hits the sound card, so to speak. The most common problem is the microphone (or headset) related to its surroundings. If you are recording sound next … Read moreHow to reduce static in my audio?

Since there is still an enormous evolution in external hard drives, information becomes stale while you write it, so here is an update on the subject that starts with a question from one of my pupils: “I didn’t know hard drives can die on me so quickly” Any piece of hardware can die on you … Read moreFor video an extra hard drive is no luxury – part II

Last week, I’ve got a question about which camcorder or webcam is best for use with a teleprompter. There are camcorders you can attach on the monitor while others need a mini-tripod. As you obviously do not want to buy 2 camcorders in the beginning, what do you need? The answer depends largely on your … Read moreWhich type of camcorder/webcam to chose when using a teleprompter?

The immediate answer is No, you don’t need High Definition Video for podcasting on iTunes or YouTube. With a regular standard video format you can do everything on the web you want and more. However, in the not-so-distant future, I’m sure there is place for the HD format on the web, Brightcove.tv is already experimenting … Read moreDo you need high definition video for iTunes or YouTube?

I was racing against a deadline to get my video finished. All went well until I discovered that something was wrong with my audio, so I had to redo the whole thing. Ok, these things happen, even among the best of us, so I started all over again and when I was half way… BAM!!! … Read moreProblems with Halogen light bulbs and how to avoid them

Jump to updated part >> I had mixed feelings after reading the reviews about the Sony HDR FX1 camcorder which is already on the market for some time (beginning 2005, if I’m correct). But I luckily found a video demo from a professional guy who made a fashion movie with it. This convinced me that … Read moreSony HDR FX1 camcorder review – updated

Whether you have a laptop or a desktop computer, when you create lots of video and audio, an extra hard drive is no luxury because videos and audios not only take up a lot of space, they fragment your hard drive as well. “What’s that?”, I hear you say, so let me explain: Try to … Read moreFor video an extra hard drive is no luxury – part I

Today I uploaded a video to YouTube of 459MB. It was a video of only 1 minute, but it contained only graphics and then you really want no compression before you upload or the result will be awful. It took about 5 hours and the end result was very peculiar because it was upside down … Read moreUploading big movies? Reset your Power Saving options.